Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the Middle East for the next few days, where he will hold meetings with officials in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the West Bank. While this is his fifth trip to the region since October, Blinken’s latest visit couldn’t come at a more delicate time.
In Gaza, Israel’s military is wrapping up its operations in the city of Khan Younis and preparing to root out Hamas cells in Rafah near the Gaza-Egypt border, which is now jampacked with more than a million Palestinians who fled from their homes to escape the fighting. As the war continues, Israel and Hamas are actively engaged in negotiations to establish a multiweek truce, which would enable the release of the remaining hostages in Hamas’ custody and boost humanitarian aid into Gaza. All of this is coming as Israeli defense officials are warning Hezbollah in no uncertain terms that the Israeli military is prepared to do to Beirut what it did to Gaza City.
In Iraq and Syria, the United States conducted its largest airstrikes to date against Iran-backed militia groups that have attacked Americans in both countries more than 165 times since mid-October. Last Friday’s strikes against the militias were retaliation for a drone attack against a U.S. outpost in Jordan a week earlier, which killed three Americans and wounded more than 40. The U.S. operation hit 85 militia targets across seven locations, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities.
A day later in Yemen, the U.S. and the United Kingdom hit 36 Houthi targets in the latest attempt to degrade the group’s drone and missile capabilities, which have harassed civilian ships in the Red Sea for months. President Joe Biden’s administration has stated repeatedly that additional military action against militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen is all but guaranteed.
Despite the violence, Biden has never given up on a dream that other U.S. presidents have had since the dawn of humankind: peace in the Middle East. Before the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Washington was in intense discussions on establishing a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a deal that would have easily rivaled Donald Trump’s administration’s Abraham Accords among Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
Yet, the Israel-Saudi talks have taken a nosedive since. Although Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is still interested in normalizing ties with Israel, Riyadh is demanding far more Israeli concessions on the Palestinian situation than it did previously. The Saudis want concrete commitments from Israel that the Palestinians will get a state of their own, the one outcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing government want to prevent.
It’s tempting to write off the White House’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East as a lost cause. Indeed, judging by the chaos swirling around Blinken at the moment, such a thought isn’t even unreasonable. In essence, the administration is trying to pull a rabbit out of its hat.
The first item on Blinken’s to-do list is cementing a truce between Israel and Hamas. Israel, with the facilitation of the U.S., Qatar and Egypt, sent Hamas a proposal that would trade about six weeks of calm and an acceleration of humanitarian supplies into Gaza in exchange for the release of the remaining 130 or so hostages Hamas captured on Oct. 7. Similar to the weeklong truce in November, Palestinian prisoners would also be released from Israeli detention.
This draft agreement has proved to be controversial in Netanyahu’s own government, particularly among the extreme right-wing ministers who view any diplomatic concessions to the terrorist group as an act of appeasement. There are problems on Hamas’ side as well: The group wants a permanent end to hostilities and a full Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza to preserve its power in the strip, which is far beyond what Netanyahu and even his more moderate colleagues are willing to accept.
The White House is hoping that the establishment of a long truce would be one giant step toward an end to the war. That sounds good in theory but is beyond difficult to put into practice. Even assuming the shooting and bombing stop, it’s hard to believe Hamas would be open to handing over the keys to its Gaza kingdom after a 17-year reign. But this is exactly what Hamas would have to do. Nothing short of that would be accepted by Israel; in fact, allowing Hamas to stick around would expose Israel’s entire monthslong military campaign in Gaza as a failure given its stated objective of eradicating the Palestinian militant group completely. Bringing Hamas into a post-Hamas technocratic government in Gaza might even be too much of a stretch for the Israelis.
Assuming the first step is made — a big assumption, to put it mildly — the next step would be just as complicated: finding some Palestinian entity that could govern Gaza and, with the help of Arab states, oversee its reconstruction. The Palestinian Authority, or PA, which administers parts of the West Bank, would be the most obvious choice to do this. Yet Netanyahu is extraordinarily hostile to the idea of the PA extending its writ and views the organization as just as bad as Hamas. The U.S. is confronting a square-peg-in-a-round-hole problem: Arab states are unlikely to get involved in Gaza unless a Palestinian state is viable, while Netanyahu is unlikely to be cooperative in this entire process if it improves the chances of a Palestinian state coming to fruition.
The White House deserves credit for jumping into the diplomatic waters. But we shouldn’t sugarcoat just how treacherous and shark-filled the swim will be.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.